Month: August 2006

Audio available: [audio:2006-08-18_audio_blog_part_2.mp3]

Well, it’s been nearly a week now and I’ve had plenty of time to play with audio.  There have been a few new developments too – I’ve bought an Olympus Digital Voice Recorder (WS-200S), plus a few accessories.  It’s very cool, and I’ll write a review of it soon.

In my last post, I said I was going to buy the Acoustica MP3 Audio Mixer software, but I didn’t, instead I spent a few days playing with it.

I *did* make a donation to Martin Laine like I said I would, I thought £10.00 ($18.00) was a reasonable donation to make, and he’s written to me thanking me for it, which was nice of him.  If you use the software and find it useful, I strongly suggest you make a donation of some sort to show your appreciation.

Back to Acoustica.   Instead of buying the MP3 Audio Mixer, I today bought the (only slightly) more expensive Acoustica Mixcraft instead.  Although I may not need all of the additional features, it’s nice to know they’re there if I need them at a later date.

Acoustica have a deal on where if you buy Mixcraft on the same day you install it, you get $5.00 off.  So that’s what I did, I installed it, tried it out for an hour, and paid $34.95 which worked out as £19.03 at the current exchange rate.

It’s very similar to MP3 Audio Mixer, and just as easy to use, but does some additional clever things if you’re inclined.  Again I’ll write a review soon, but if you can’t wait for that, just nip along to their website and grab a copy, you’ll be glad you did.

Audio available: [audio:2006-08-12_audio_blog.mp3]

I’ve added audio to my blog.  Click the arrow to listen to me speak.  (Yikes!)

So now you can listen to me as well as read, or maybe you can just listen while you do something else, and save a bit of time.  Maybe my voice will annoy you like it annoys my wife sometimes, and you’ll only listen once and decide to just read instead.

Whatever.  You now have choice.

For recording the audio, I’ve used a "try before you buy" version of Acoustica MP3 Audio Mixer.  It’s probably the easiest to use recording tool I’ve ever used bar my old cassette deck.  By that I mean, that while reading this back to make the recording you may be listening to now, I made a lot of mistakes.

No I’m not psychic, I just know I make mistakes.  The software allows you to quickly re-record the bits you’ve fluffed, cut the bad bits out and replace them with the good version.  While most recording tools can do this, the Acoustica interface is very simple to use, you just have to try it to believe it.

It also lets you put backing tracks on and generally mix and merge sounds, and each bit of audio can occupy its own track.

It has its own format for saving a set of tracks called a "Sound Group" and uses the .sgp file extension.  When you’re done editing it all, you can choose to save it as an MP3 if you like, which is what you’re listening to now.  Alternatively you can save it as a WAV, a WMA or REAL audio, but why would you want to do that when you have MP3?

It only costs $24.95, and I’ll buy a copy straight after posting this blog and adding the audio.

To add the play button above, I’m using the completely free WordPress Audio Plugin written by Martin Laine.  Thank you Martin, I’ll be making a donation shortly.  It’s also very easy to use, so I like!

The headphone / microphone combo is an old one which I think isn’t made any more, part of the Microsoft Sidewinder Game Voice.  The real manufacturer is Plantronics, so it’s pretty good.  Before I started using this, I tested out a really, really cheap one.  It cost me £1.00, that’s about $1.80 as I write, and the sound wasn’t too bad at all, but it felt uncomfortable sitting on my head, which is the only reason I switched.

I suppose the next step is to work out how to do the audio RSS feed. 

I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up the audio blog, I think I may find I write first and then add audio later when I have time.  We’ll see…

Last night I signed up for a marketing seminar here in the UK at Aston University in Birmingham.

http://www.internetseminarsintheuk.com/

I’ve often looked at the US seminars and thought I’d quite like to go to some of them, but being a "homebody" I’ve always thought it’s a bit of a jaunt for just a couple of days.  But I promised myself that if ever I got wind of a decent UK one, with some of the big names in marketing, then I’d go to it.

And here we are, in three weeks time on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd September (Friday, Saturday, Sunday), there’s a big seminar right on my doorstep less than 10 miles away.  And the names don’t get much bigger than this.

I’ll get to meet and learn from:-

Mike Filsaime – ButterflyMarketing.com

Joel Comm – AdsenseDetective.com

Craig Perrine – MaverickMarketer.com

Marc Harty – PRTraffic.com

Michel Fortin and Sylvie Charrier – SuccessDoctor.com

John Taylor – Test-and-Track.com

Joe Robson – NewbieClub.com

Martin Avis – KickstartDaily.com

The amazing thing is the price – just $450.00 for all three days.  This translated to £244.30 after conversion through PayPal.  The reason for the rock bottom price is to attract and then get people hooked on these seminars, so that’s my bit of good fortune. 

They’re a fairly big thing in the US, but they really need a kick in the pants here in the UK.  I’ve no doubt that over the next few years they’ll get bigger and more expensive, but I’ll still attend as the benefits will far outweigh the cost.

I’m really looking forward to it, and I’ll be taking my camera with me for a few shots with these big names.

After buying and then reading the Butterfly Marketing Manuscript TWICE yesterday, I went and bought the full bundle today.  I just felt that after reading, I couldn’t miss out on the software, especially having seen (and bought from) sites that were built with the Butterfly Marketing scripts.

I’m NOT saying that the manuscript is an advert for the software, far from it, but I felt I couldn’t do without the software after experiencing BM sites from a customer point of view, and especially after reading the book. 

So this afternoon, I shelled out and bought the full package.  I’ve spent the last couple of hours converting a site I was building for a new software product to use the Butterfly Marketing script.  I haven’t finished yet, but I must say it seems a lot easier using this than the previous script which I had purchased as an "instead of" BM.

That other script is called the Motivated Marketing System and comes with a nice little bundle of goodies, I’ll do a review of that another time.  Maybe I’ll make it a comparitive review against BM.  The output is similar in many ways, but the behind the scenes function is very different, and there’s something I’ve found out about MMS that I’ve not seen posted anywhere else.

Back to BM.

It really is VERY cool.  If you’re a bit of a geek like me, you’ll find that it’s an impressive script.

Now I jumped straight in with both feet and started using it by trial and error, but it wasn’t too much of a trial as everything is fairly clearly labelled.  In retrospect, what I really should have done is have a good look at the BM members site, because there are a truckload of videos there on everything from the function of the software right down to how to construct a web page with HTML. 

It also goes as far as explaining blogs and RSS feeds, split testing, writing an ebook, formatting an ezine, plus a pile of other things I’ll bring up when I do my review.  Wow!  Extreme VFM (Value For Money), and the amount of content is a bit scary.  It’s almost as if you don’t need to purchase any other training as it’s all here.

I’m going to ask my wife to go through all the videos at her own pace as she wants to know a lot more about the technical side, but we find it difficult to both sit down together at the same time so I can teach her.  (We have children!)

This is truly a quality package, and well worth the asking price. 

Give me a couple of weeks to write a review, and maybe I’ll do my own tutorial for my members, building a site from scratch.

If you can’t wait, and I really can’t blame you if you can’t, then just go and get the full Butterfly Marketing package.

LINK ~ Butterfly Marketing

Okay, after seeing the first release of Butterfly Marketing, I’ll openly say that I wanted it.

The reason I didn’t buy it wasn’t the expense, it was my concern that it was just another hyped up product promising the earth and delivering very little.  And then I started to see web sites built around the software…

I realised there was great potential in just the software, let alone all the other stuff that came with it, but I really wanted to take a look at the Butterfly Marketing Manuscript.  If I could have a read of that then I could really make my mind up about this package.

But of course the world doesn’t stand still.  The whole BM package had sold out, there were only 1000 copies in the first launch at the orginal price.  When it was re-launched, the price went up from $997.00 to $1497.00 which is its current price, but when those copies are gone, the price goes up to $1997.00 or even $2497.00.

So, I was really pleased to see that just the manuscript itself was released today for $97.00 and so I bought it.

I’ve just spent the last few hours on and off, reading and re-reading the manuscript. Stunning stuff.  Mike Filsaime really does "spill his guts" as to how he’s got to where he is in such a relatively short time.

Now, I’ve bought and read some hyped up junk in the last 12 months or so and said to myself "oh, come on!" at the end of it, as it’s clear there are parts that have been very carefully left out.  As far as I can see, with the Butterfly Marketing Manuscript nothing has been left out other than what I would call the "obvious" bits.  There’s little to no filler at all in this book, this truly is the "real deal".

I would go so far as to say that if you want to stand any chance in selling anything online, then you need to understand the concepts and methods he outlines.  Mike Filsaime freely admits that many of the ideas weren’t his, but the execution of them certainly is, and this book will go down as one of the marketing classics to be read by students 100 years from now.

I’ll write a review of this in the next week or so, but in the meantime my advice is go and get it NOW. 

LINK ~  The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript by Mike Filsaime

You won’t be sorry…